The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (8 page)

Abraham Zacuto (1575–1642), called Zacutus Lusitanus, endorsed in his
Praxis Medica Admiranda
of 1637 the standard medical view that marriage was best for hysterics but that friction of the vulva by a physician or midwife could be employed if the preferred treatment failed. He first describes a case of marriage as a successful therapy, in terms that must
have been reassuring to those committed to the androcentric model of sexuality:

Nor should you wonder at all these things which are natural to women, and are particularly to be expected of the condition of virgins; because of retention of the sexual fluid, the heart and surrounding areas are enveloped in a morbid and moist exudation: this is especially true of the more lascivious females, inclined to venery, passionate women who are most eager to experience physical pleasure; if she is of this type she cannot ever be relieved by any aid except that of her parents, who are advised to find her a husband. Having done so, the man’s strong and vigorous intercourse alleviated the frenzy. She married an energetic young man, who, having discharged his marital responsibilities with vigor, she took to this with enthusiasm; under this appropriate treatment she flourished, revived, bloomed with the rosy shade of well-being, and was entirely restored to health.
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He goes on, however to describe a “virginella” for whom it was necessary to use a pessary made from cyclamen, onion, garlic, and ox gall, “from the motion of which and the excitement and heat it aroused in the private parts, a copious quantity of sexual fluid was emitted and was visible after the fury of the attack had subsided.” Zacuto expresses concern about whether “God-fearing physicians” ought really to perform such procedures and concludes that they are acceptable when women are in danger of death from hysteria. But he also notes that not all of his colleagues concur: “As to whether to draw this harmful fluid out of the uterus by exciting and rubbing the private parts, Raphael Moxius and Carrerius disagree most articulately.”

Nicolaas Fonteyn (Nicolaus Fontanus, fl. 1630) made a colorful presentation in 1652 of the views of his time on this subject, in the characteristically florid and inconsistent English of seventeenth-century vernacular medical documents:

Wives are more healthfull then Widowes, or Virgins, because they are refreshed with the mans seed, and ejaculate their own, which being excluded, the cause of the evill is taken away. This is evident from the words of
Hippocrates
, who adviseth young Maids to marrie, when they are thus troubled; that women have stones [testicles; i.e., ovaries or glands] and seed, no true Anatomist will denie; the womans seed, I confess, in regard of the small quantitie of heat, is more imperfect then the seed of the mans, yet is it most absolute in itselfe, and fit for Generation. Another cause also may be added, besides that which is alledged from
Hippocrates
, namely, that married women by lying with their husbands, doe loosen the passages of the seed, and so the Courses come down more easily throw them; Now in Virgins it falls out otherwise, because the bloud is stopped by the constipation and obstruction of the veines, and being stopped putrifies, from which putrifaction grosse vapours doe arise, and from thence heavinesse of minde, and dulnesse of spirit, a benummednesse of the parts, timorousnesse, and an aptness to be frighted, with a sudden propensitie to fall into fits of the Mother, by reason of much bloud, oppressing and burthening the heart, also continuall anxiety, sadness, and want of sleep, with idle talking, and an alienation of the minde, but that which most commonly afflicts them, is a difficulty and paine to fetch their breath, for the chest by a continuall dialatation and compression, draweth the bloud from the
Matrix
to it selfe, in a large proportion, and sometimes produceth
asthmaticall
effects. But what shall we say concerning Widowes, who lye fallow, and live sequestred from these
Venereous
Conjunctions? we must conclude, that if they be young, of a black complexion, and hairie, and are likewise somewhat discoloured in their cheeks, that they have a spirit of salacity, and feel within themselves a frequent titillation, their seed being hot and prurient, doth irritate and inflate them to
Venery
, neither is this concupiscence allaid and qualified, but by provoking the ejaculation of the seed, as
Galen
propounds the advice in the example of a widow, who was afflected with intolerable symptomes, till the abundance of the spermatick humour was diminished by the hand of a skilfull Midwife, and a convenient oyntment, which passage will also furnish us with this argument, that the use of
Venery
is exceeding wholesome, if the woman will confine her selfe to the Lawes of moderation, so that she feele no wearisomnesse, nor weaknesse in her body, after those pleasing conflicts.
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There is a parallel, but much more concise, account by John Pechey (1655–1716), who unlike most of his contemporaries is familiar with the sexual function of the clitoris; he describes the “suffocation of the womb” as a disease caused by “the retention of the Seed” and cured by an “evacuation” of it either by intercourse or by the use of “odoriferous salves.”
³³

The famous physician Thomas Sydenham (1624–89) believed that hysteria was responsible for about “one-sixth of all human maladies.” In his “Epistolary Dissertation” he says:

Of all chronic diseases hysteria—unless I err—is the commonest; since just as fevers—taken with their accompaniments—equal two thirds of the number of all chronic diseases taken together, so do hysterical complaints (or complaints so called) make one half of the remaining third. As to females, if we except those who lead a hard and hardy life, there is rarely one who is wholly free from them—and females, be it remembered, form one half of the adults of the world.
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If hysteria were merely the normal functioning of female sexuality, it would hardly be surprising that nearly all women showed symptoms, except perhaps those too exhausted by hard labor and short commons.

William Harvey, much better known for his work on the circulation of the blood than for his
Anatomical Exercitations concerning the Generation of Living Creatures
(1653), considered hysteria a terrible scourge among women, caused, in his view, by disorders of menstruation or by sexual deprivation:

No man (who is but never so little versed in such matters) is ignorant, what grievous
symptomes
, the Rising, Bearing down and Perversion, and Convulsion of the
Wombe
do excite; what horrid extravagancies of minde, what Phrensies, Melancholy Distempers, and Outragiousness, the
preternatural Diseases
of the Womb do induce, as if the affected Persons were inchanted: as also how many difficult
Diseases
, the depraved effluxions of the Terms, or the use of
Venus
, much intermitted and long desired, do foment. [Emphasis in the original]
³⁵

In “On Parturition” (1647) he had described the spasms or paroxysms of the female reproductive system during hysterical episodes and asserted that these occurred when “the passions are strong.”
³⁶

Of all the seventeenth-century physicians who wrote on hysteria, the most matter-of-fact and morally unabashed was Nathaniel Highmore, whose
De Passione Hysterica et Affectione Hypochondriaca
of 1660 is one of the few medical works in Western history to straightforwardly
call the hysterical paroxysm an orgasm. He describes the engorgement of the female genitalia with blood during the arousal stage and the accompanying release of vaginal fluids. The paroxysm, he observes, constricts the blood vessels during the “crisis” and returns the blood to the central organs. Both his description and the word he uses—
orgasmum
, which has only one meaning in Latin—leave no doubt that he fully understands the sexual character of the release the patient experiences in the hysterical paroxysm.
³⁷
He admits, however, that the technique of producing the desired crisis is difficult for physicians to learn. I shall return to this subject later. His account of the disease, however, was controversial in its time and virtually ignored in later centuries.
³⁸

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES

Hermann Boerhaave (1668–1738) refers to Aretaeus’s description and treatment, recommending exercise, marriage, and massage for both female hysterics and male hypochondriacs.
³⁹
In Boerhaave’s day hypochondriasis did not mean a preoccupation with psychosomatic ailments but was the parallel to hysteria in women: a disorder of males caused by sexual deprivation. Not all physicians believed the disorder existed; Boerhaave, evidently, was one of the believers. Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733) seems to have thought that marrying off young women as a treatment for hysteria was old-fashioned, and in his
Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysteric Passions
of 1711 he prescribed horseback riding for hysterical young girls combined with a regimen of massage for up to three hours daily.
⁴⁰
The same author, apparently deeply concerned about the insalubrious effects of sexual deprivation on humanity, published in 1724 a volume called A Modest
Defence of Publick Stews
. The anonymous author of the 1737
Onania
differed from these views, asserting that hysteria, sterility, and leucorrhea were caused by masturbation. His recommended cure was traditional: marriage.
⁴¹

Havelock Ellis, who surveys much of the literature of hysteria and sexuality in his
Studies in the Psychology of Sex
, mentions Albrecht von Haller (1708–77).
⁴²
Ellis asserts that Haller “said that women are especially liable to suffer from privation of sexual intercourse to which they have become accustomed, and referred to chlorosis, hysteria, nymphomania
and simple mania curable by intercourse.” William Cullen (1710–90), a physician famous in his own and later times, wrote in his essay “On Hysteria or Hysteric Disease,” in
First Lines of the Practice of Physic
, that it occurred “frequently in young widows. It occurs especially in those females who are liable to the Nymphomania; and the Nosologists have properly enough marked one of the varieties of the disease by the title of
Hysteria Libinosa
.”
⁴³
He refers to the engorgement of the blood vessels of the female genitalia during arousal, reminiscent of the plethora of pent-up fluids thought by his predecessors to require sexual purging, and likens it to the engorgement of blood vessels in the brain then thought to accompany epilepsy. Describing the hysterical paroxysm, Cullen notes that during it the entire abdominal area is contracted, including the anal sphincter, and that urination is entirely suppressed.

Joseph Raulin (1708–84) too, in his
Traité des affections vaporeuses du sexe
of 1758, mentions contractions or “local spasms” in hysterical fits. There are few if any human conditions other than orgasm that involve strong contractions of the vagina and anal sphincter. Certainly the characteristic orgasmic contractions of the uterus and vagina provide relief from the “symptoms” of arousal, and no doubt the patients of these physicians reported feeling much better for the experience.

Purportedly therapeutic experiences that sound remarkably similar to those described above were provided by less than reputable practitioners, such as Friedrich Anton Mesmer (1733–1815). Since he was not a physician, the social camouflage of medical practice did not extend to him, and thus he was widely suspected of stirring up sexual passions in his female patients. Similar doubts had been expressed about the ecstatic behavior of the female convulsionaries of Saint Médard, bishop of Vermandois (ca. 470-ca. 560) at the chapel of Abbé Paris.
⁴⁴
Charles MacKay commented in 1841 on the predominance of women and girls among Mesmer’s followers, describing a mesmeric session as follows: the women sat in a circle around a vessel of “magnetised water” and iron filings, holding hands and touching knees. “Assistant magnetisers, generally strong, handsome young men,” came in and “embraced the patient between the knees,” massaging her breasts and torso as they gazed into her eyes. “A few wild notes on the harmonica or piano-forte or the melodious voice of a hidden opera-singer” were the only sounds except, presumably, for the breathing of the magnetees. MacKay tells us that
the women began to redden visibly, until “off they went, one after the other, in convulsive fits. Some of them sobbed and tore their hair, others laughed till the tears ran from their eyes, while others shrieked and screamed and yelled till they became insensible altogether.” After the crisis, Mesmer himself entered and stroked the faces, spines, breasts, and abdomens of the “insensible,” whereupon “they were restored to consciousness.”
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